334 PHYSIOLOGY AND HEALTH. 



but to the end of the nerve, where impressions should be 

 received; and there, at the extremity, the irritation or sensa- 

 tion seems to be. If there is injury of the nerve, the pain is 

 not felt at the wounded place, but at the minute extremities. 

 Thus, when we strike the elbow against a table, and hurt the 

 trunk of the nerve that leads to the fingers, we do not feel pain 

 at the elbow, which was struck, but a tingling pain at the fin- 

 gers, where the terminations of this nerve are distributed. 



765. Likewise, the pain of any local disease of the nerve 

 is felt at its extremities. The excessively painful nervous af- 

 fection of tic douloureux is felt on the surface of the cheek ; 

 but the cause is not, as is supposed by those unacquainted 

 with the cause, in the skin or flesh, but in the trunk of the 

 nerve leading from the face to the brain. This cause may 

 be situated any where in the course of the nerve, between 

 its outer ends in the flesh and the inner end in the brain. 

 Wherever it may be, the effect is the same, and the painful 

 sensations seem to be at the terminations of its branches 

 which go off from the nerve below the diseased point. 



766. The disease may be in a nerve very near the brain, 

 and yet the pain is felt at its remote extremity. Miss VV. 

 complained of very severe and sharp pains in the arm and 

 hand It seemed to her, she said, as if thousands of needles 

 were incessantly running through the flesh. For this, all 

 sorts of applications had been made to the seat of the pain, 

 and all without effect. Suspecting the pain had a remote 

 origin, her physician examined the back-bone at the place 

 where the nerve went from the spinal cord to the arm, and 

 there discovered great tenderness pressure on this spot in- 

 creased the pain in the arm and hand. Blood was then taken 

 from the back at this point, and the remote distress in the 

 arm and hand was immediately relieved. She afterward had 

 similar pains, at different times, in the side, the stomach, the 

 lower extremities, and the feet, and these were relieved by 

 cupping, or by the application of leeches, or~a blister, over 

 that part of the back-bone where the nerve of these several 

 suffering parts originated. 



